


Eternal

by LLReid



Category: Labyrinths of Astoria (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, H.E.R.A, Serious Injuries, dyslexic writer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 17:51:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20998898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: After a brutal and disastrous attempt at awakening Hera’s essence, Medusa gets protective of her girlfriend.





	Eternal

“She let me live,” Tatiana said, quietly. Cradled in the safety of Medusa’s embrace, the ashen faced mortal hadn’t spoken a word since the ritual that would have allowed Hera to overtake her body had been interrupted. The mere sound of her voice, so hoarse from the strain of what she had been forced to endure that each word sounded like it physically hurt, drew the attention of everyone in the elevator. Both Cyprin and Aphrodite seemed to be as startled by what she had said as the gorgon was.

Looking at her, Medusa didn’t know what to remark on first: That the girl was so young but felt old. That the girl was beautiful, with rich brown hair and coppery eyes that shone in the golden light that filled the elevator. Or that her sweet face would have been even more beautiful had it not been covered in a patchwork of bruises. Such horrible bruises, including a black eye that would undoubtedly be swollen shut at some point if Apollo’s doctors didn’t start working on her soon. Tatiana was staring at her, quiet and still as a cat, a mixture of lingering fear and curiosity in her gaze.

Medusa’s eyes were still bright with the tears the day had caused. One still clung to her cheek. With a trembling hand Tatiana wiped it away. Another one the injured woman found down by her jaw. The gorgon didn’t understand — how she could be so delicate, so small, when she had overturned her life entirely. Worked miracles with those hands and that soul, this woman who she had waited close to a thousand years to find. She was trembling. Not with fear, not as she looked up at her. And it was only when Tatiana settled her hand on Medusa’s chest, not to push her away but to feel the raging, thunderous heartbeat beneath, that Medusa lowered her head and kissed her.

“Annie, sweetheart, you hit your head on the marble flooring,” she said, softly. The memory of Tatiana and the goddess warring would forever be engrained in her memory. All she could see was the whites of her eyes as she had convulsed, the screams of agony had vibrated off the walls and had been so horrific that even Hades had turned away. Her body had remained the same but Hera wasn’t her love, and to her the difference had been abundantly clear. Medusa had known, since the moment she figured out how important Tatiana was to Olympus, that whilst her Annie would always pick her, Hera would not. She had been pushed in a direction she hadn’t want to go, and one she had not been ready for upon the whims of the psychotic powers that be — people who said they knew what was best for the mortal. They had taken every single one of her choices away...and more than anything Medusa wanted to make them pay.

“That was after,” Tatiana insisted, so desperately that she almost sounded delirious. “We spoke, Medusa. She knew that begging for help never gets you any, so she asked...she gave me a choice. She didn’t want to return and she passed her abilities onto me— I chose it. I wasn’t— death can’t separate us now.”

“She passed her abilities onto you?,” Cyprin echoed. The demigod was uncharacteristically disheveled, their white shirt creased and hanging askew. Short black hair gleamed like a raven's feathers, off-setting their unusually pale skin and rich eyes so deep they were almost like red wine, in the strange light of the elevator. Despite their past difficulties, despite their obvious love for Tatiana, without their assistance Medusa knew that she would have stood no chance in stopping the ritual.

Tatiana nodded, but winced in pain at the movement. “I’m still me but I’m also her. She gave me her powers and her life.”

Aphrodite reached out and brushed a stray strand of warm chocolate hair out of Tatiana’s face, her hand lingering against the young woman’s cheek. Her regal mask had shattered during the rite, replaced by the horrified look of a mother watching someone who may as well have been one of her own essentially being tortured at the hands of Zeus. She was stunning, long and lean, each of her features perfectly formed and smooth. Her loose white dress contrasted with her creamy tanned skin, and a three-plated gold torque covered much of her chest and neck. Bracelets of brightly coloured gemstones and gold glimmered around her wrists, and her feet were sandaled beneath matching anklets. A thin circlet comprising dangling gold and jewels crowned her head. She had two male agents with her, armed to the teeth with an assortment of concealed weapons, both of them studying the scene from behind their dark glasses — making sure there was absolutely no threat to the goddess as she studied Tatiana. Her thick brows furrowed in concentration, only relaxing when whatever she was searching for in the girl’s face was found.

“You are certainly no longer mortal,” Aphrodite breathed. “Hera’s essence and your own are now one in the same, Tatiana.”

“I know,” Tatiana whispered, a hint of a smile spreading across her face before she slipped from consciousness, again. Her entire body went limp in Medusa’s arms, the blood pouring from the wounds she had sustained continuing to flow as the elevator doors opened up onto the hospital ward. 

The metallic smell of blood and antiseptic solutions immediately contributed to the nausea brewing in the depths of the gorgon’s stomach, which was intensified even more by having to hand over the love of her life into the care of strangers. The team of waiting nurses and doctors wearing Apollo’s badge were not a threat, but that didn’t matter. After what she had just witnessed the idea of having anyone she didn’t know anywhere near Tatiana whilst she was in such a vulnerable state made her anxious.

“You said she was no longer mortal,” she muttered whilst watching the medical professionals whisk Tatiana away on a gurney. Their mint coloured scrubs stood out beneath the fluorescent lights and disgustingly sterile hallway, a small trail of Tatiana’s blood spilling onto the linoleum floor in their wake.

“She’s still herself, right?,” Cyprin prodded. “She’s still Anna?”

Both she and Cyprin stared at Aphrodite, expectantly, as she ushered them into the small waiting room that Medusa was becoming far too familiar with for her liking. Whether she liked it or not both she and Cyprin shared the same pain, as both of them were helplessly in love with the same woman. Whilst she was terrified for her ‘Annie’, the demigod was equally as frightened for their ‘Anna’. If Tatiana had not valued her friendship with Cyprin so much Medusa likely would have throttled them for daring to love her girlfriend like she did, but Tatiana had made sure that she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was hers, and they were the beginning and middle and end. They were a song that had been sung from the very first ember of light in the world.

“Tatiana is still Tatiana,” Aphrodite assured them. All three of them sat down together on the uncomfortable seats, the scratchy fabric instantly felt itchy against the backs of her thighs. 

“But?,” Medusa prodded.

“Hera’s soul has moved on but her power remains. Tatiana no longer needs her ring to call her abilities to light as she is now not only a goddess, but queen of the gods,” said Aphrodite.

“Anna...is...queen of the gods...and she doesn’t need her ring? Mother, are you sure—“

“Yes, Alex. You didn't need a weapon at all when you are one.”

“She’s not a weapon! I won’t let you drag her away from her life to serve on Olympus or be forced into a marriage with Zeus. She's mine. And if any of you lay a hand on her, you lose that hand. And then lose your head. Any one of you who dares harm her will die screaming, that I promise you,” she snarled. Her grip on the wooden arms of her chair was so tight that there was a distinctive creaking sound as they began to splinter under the weight of her rage. She didn’t care that she was promising to end a top tier goddess...no one from Olympus was getting anywhere near her girlfriend after what had happened. She’d set the world ablaze before allowing it.

“Medusa,” Aphrodite said, gently, stilling her with a gentle hand on her forearm. “She is technically the queen, no one can force her to do anything...not even Zeus. The power does not belong to Hera. Not any longer. It belongs only to Tatiana – as Tatiana now answers only to herself, as eternity is now hers to decide, to forge.” The goddess’ eyes scanned her face as she took a deep breath, as if steadying herself to keep from crying. “You will no longer have to endure the pain of watching her grow old and then losing her after only a few short decades. You will no longer be cursed to go on without her.”

Medusa’s jaw almost hit the floor as she forced herself to take a step back from her anger, as what Aphrodite had just said actually sunk in. The idea of the woman she loved more than should have been physically possible having a mortal lifespan had reduced her to tears on multiple occasions. Being forced to face eternity without Tatiana at her side was a fate worse than death itself...she hadn’t actually told anyone that she had already planned to put a bullet in her skull rather than have to endure the loneliness that would follow Tatiana’s death. Immortality is not as much of a gift as mortals would believe. It can breed monsters that even the bravest amongst them would be sick to learn about. It can be almost impossible for them to imagine the sadists they’ve encountered — and then imagine them with millennia to hone their craft and warped desires, having lost everyone they cared about long ago. Forever is an awfully long time to be stuck with oneself.

She recalled the moment she had witnessed Hera take over Tatiana’s body, how everything about the woman she loved had vanished in a matter of seconds. In that moment she had truly believe that her Annie was gone. That vibrant, fierce, loving soul; the woman who she often called the Light of Her Life; the woman who had been a beacon of hope — just like that, as if she were no more than a wisp of candlelight, she had been gone. And in that moment Medusa had finally understood that there were forces greater than obedience, and discipline, and brutality. Understood that she had not been born soulless; she had not been born without a heart...because for that split second she thought that Tatiana was dead, her heart hadn’t just broken...her heart had completely shattered. She hadn’t known what to do with it, that rage and heart ache. It still burned and hunted her, still made her want to rip and roar and rend the entire world into pieces. She felt it all — too keenly, too sharply. Hated and cared and loved and dreaded, more than other people, she thought.

“She said that Hera gave her a choice,” Medusa said, more to herself than anyone else. Tatiana had chosen life, chosen her. A girl of only twenty-five and she had bravely stared right in the face of the top tier gods, in the face of Echidna, and she had refused to be their pawn. Through the agony they had forced upon her, through her fear, she had chosen her. She had fought to stay with her. Nobody had ever done anything like that for her. Nobody had ever cared so much.

“What does this mean for Anna?,” Cyprin asked Aphrodite. “I know it may be a trivial matter to be concerned about but she won’t be happy if this effects her work at all.”

A small laugh escaped from the back of Medusa’s throat before she could stop it. Cyprin was right. Tatiana may be the most top tier goddess but had she to be treated any differently by anyone she would be absolutely incensed and Medusa would never hear the end of it.

“It means whatever she wishes it to...but knowing her, I don’t think much will change. Save for her ability to mouth off to whoever she likes without fear of retribution, of course.” The goddess smiled and directed her attention out of the floor to ceiling windows, the view of the city cast in the hues of red and gold as summer slowly began fading into fall waiting to greet her. “She is so like my dear Elizabeth in that way.”

She raised an eyebrow at how the name of Tatiana’s mother sounded on Aphrodite’s lips. Their affair hadn’t been a secret at all, during the 90s New York had been absolutely awash with rumours of the pair...yet sitting there at the side of the goddess, she realised how important Elizabeth must have been to her. The wavering in her voice wasn’t just sadness, it was the same sort of heartbreak that she had feared she would one day have to face. Aphrodite hadn’t just cared for her, she had loved her...truly, deeply.

She thought of Tatiana’s family for a moment, but realised there was not a single one of them that her girlfriend would want her to call. Josh would only worry to the point of making himself unwell. Her father had long since up and left, and she had dropped the classic Russian patronymic from her name years prior. Since her mother’s death her family had only become more disjointed and dysfunctional. 

Unfortunately not a single family finds itself exempt from that one haunted casualty who suffered irreparable damage in the crucible they entered at birth, it was a truth Medusa knew all too well. Where some children can emerge from conditions of soul-killing toxicity and manage to make their lives into something of worth and value, others can’t limp away from the hurts and gleanings time decanted for them in flawed beakers of memory. They carry the family cross up the hill toward Calvary and don’t mind letting every other member of their aggrieved tribe in on the source of their suffering. There is one crazy that belongs to each of us: the brother who kills the spirit of any room he enters; the sister who’s a drug addict in her teens and marries a series of psychopaths, always making sure she bears their children, who carry their genes of madness to the grave. There’s the neurotic mother who’s so demanding that the sound of her voice over the phone can cause instant nausea in her daughters. The variations are endless and fascinating. Tatiana often claimed to have never attended a family reunion where she was not warned of a Venus flytrap holding court among the older women, or a pitcher plant glistening with drops of sweet poison trying to sell his version of the family maelstrom to his young male cousins. When the stories begin rolling out, as they always do, one learns of feuds that seem unbrokerable, or sexual abuse that darkens each tale with its intimation of ruin. That uncle hates that aunt and that cousin hates your mother and your sister won’t talk to your brother because of something he said to a date she later married and then divorced. In every room Tatiana entered she could sniff out unhappiness and rancor like a snake smelling the nest of a wren with its tongue. Medusa swore that she did so without even realising it, she picked up associations of distemper and aggravation. As far as she could tell, every family produces its solitary misfit, its mirror image of all the ghosts summoned out of the small or large hells of childhood, the spiller of the apple cart, the jack of spades, the black-hearted knight, the shit stirrer, the sibling with the uncontrollable tongue, the father brutal by habit, the uncle who tried to feel up his nieces, the aunt too neurotic ever to leave home. One could talk to Tatiana all they wanted about happy families, but let the girl loose at a wedding or a funeral and she’d bring you back the family crazy in a matter of moments. To her, they were always that easy to find, because her family really was that dysfunctional.

Medusa was the only family Tatiana would want knowing her condition. They were each other’s family. Them and their small circle of friends, they were all each other had. She didn’t have long to dwell on the thought, as she was presented with numerous forms to fill out on Tatiana’s behalf...essentially giving them consent to do whatever they had to do to make her better because Tatiana couldn’t voice her own opinion in whatever state she was in. The thought made her anxious, so she tried her best to remember the sense of her beside her, warm and solid in bed, and the rhythm of her breathing as she slept. The light across the bones of her face in moonlight and the soft flush of her skin in the rising sun as it shone through the windows.

Hospitals were the most horrid of places. Time somehow seems to distort within their bounds, the minutes stretching on and on for hours on end. People come and people go. The sickening smell of blood, bleach, and other chemicals along with the unnatural lighting that assaulted the senses at all times meant that Emergency Rooms...were quite literally the nightmares your nightmares had while they slept. Even the most exciting and busy places turned out to be mind numbingly boring most of the time. Wars. Gangster’s dens. Emergency rooms.

—

Almost two hours of sitting in the waiting room with Aphrodite and Cyprin passed by before she was allowed to be reunited with Tatiana. It was just in time, as no one could have stopped her from charging the rooms in search of her had it taken much longer.

Tatiana had never looked as pale or frail as she did when Medusa entered the small room, it was the same one where she had once been treated when she requested Tatiana take her case. But even dressed in the hospital issued gown she was still the most lovely thing the gorgon had ever seen, just as beautiful as she had been when she was laying in that very same bed and Tatiana had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely stranger. The woman tucked beneath the blankets seemed like she was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean more anxious than she had ever seen her. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her healing features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering. One who had learned that one does not deal with the gods. One survives them.

But when she saw Medusa, she smiled. She may have been high as a kite on morphine, but when she beamed at Medusa and beckoned her into her arms nothing else in the world mattered. Only her.

“I missed you so much,” Tatiana whispered.

“You were dead," she said, her voice breaking. "I thought you were dead.”

“I kept thinking about how you might never know that I missed you, about how it would always seem like there was only an elevator ride between us...but I wouldn’t be me anymore.” Tatiana’s hand trembled as she brushed a ruby strand of hair out Medusa’s face. The mere sight of the multiple IV lines started on the back of her small hand hurt the gorgon’s heart. “But I told Hera that if it was death separating us...I would find you. I didn’t care how many rules it would break or how restless it would have made her life. I didn’t care what it took, I would find my way back to you again. Always.”

She fought the urge to touch her face. The swelling from the beating that the ritual had given her had gone down, but the bruises remained. Mottled purple and blue and yellow along her cheekbones, a vicious black eye, and a still-healing split lip. 

“No one has ever fought for me like you have,” she admitted. “No one has ever loved me so much...and I never imagined that I was capable of loving so fiercely in turn. I understand why so many empires have fallen apart for love now. Had Hera killed you I would have torn Olympus to shreds. I wouldn’t have stopped until I had the gods heads on a spike. If you were going to die, I was going to die with you. I couldn’t stop thinking it over and over as you screamed, as I tried to do whatever it took to get you back: you were my Annie, my Annie, my Annie. Not theirs.”

“Wherever I was with Hera, I heard you screaming. It was dark and I couldn’t see but I could hear you.”

“I saw her momentarily overtake your body.”

“What was she like?”

“She wasn’t you.”

Tatiana smiled, sadly, and nodded her head. “She gave me her powers. I’m a—“

“I know, my love. I know,” she soothed. “But you’re still you...”

“And now you don’t have to worry about losing me or watching me go senile.”

The light tease in her voice made Medusa giggle, the laugh wracking through her all muddled up with a soft sob as more tears spilled down her face. “Were you as afraid as I was?”

“At first I was,” Tatiana said, softly. “But Hera spoke to me like a real person, not a goddess. I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal. I knew that I was a survivor, and I was strong...and both of us decided that we would not be weak, or helpless again. We would not, could not be broken or bent to the will of others. Tamed.”

Medusa closed the distance between them and peppered kisses around her bruised face, as gently as she possibly could manage. “My dearest friend through many dangers. My lover who healed my broken and weary soul.”

“My angel who waited for me against all hope, despite all odds,” Tatiana whispered, guiding their entwined hands to rest over her heart. “I claim you, Medusa. To whatever end.”

Medusa smiled, never having felt so light in her whole life. And she wondered if love was too weak a word for what she felt, what Tatiana’s presence in her life had done for her. It had not taken a monster to destroy a monster — but light, light to drive out the lingering darkness. With each day she felt the barriers melting. She let them melt. Because of her genuine laugh, because she had caught her one afternoon sleeping with her face in the middle of a book and the sight had set her up for an entire week. Their hands clasped between them, she whispered into her ear, "I claim you, too, Tatiana Medvedeva. Even when this world is a forgotten whisper of shimmering dust floating between the stars, I will always love you.”

“I love you,” Tatiana whispered, groggily, and kissed her brow. 

“Thorns and all?,” smirked Medusa.

“Thorns and all.” A small shiver ran through Tatiana’s body so Medusa climbed into the bed beside her, knowing that being held would be a far greater comfort to her than anything else that she could possibly do. “I believe everything happens for a reason. Don’t you? Whether it is decided by the gods or some sort of strings of fate, I don't know. I don't really care. But I am grateful for it, whatever it is. Grateful that it brought you into my life. If it hadn't... I don’t know who or where I’d be today," she said to her, "I would not have known the true depths of strength, of resilience, of honour and loyalty." 

Medusa’s eyes gleamed bright. “If I had not met you, I would not have known that it is the family you make, not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair." She pressed a kiss between her eyebrows. “I would have waited five hundred more years for you. A thousand years. And even if a human life span was all the time we were allowed to have...the wait would have been well worth it. I spent centuries wandering the world, from empires to kingdoms to wastelands, never settling, never stopping — not for one moment. I was always looking toward the horizon, always wondering what waited across the next ocean, over the next mountain. But I think...I think that whole time, all those centuries, I was just looking for you.” Tatiana wiped away the tears sliding down her face. "I believe that everything happened, exactly the way it had to...so I could find you." She kissed another tear away. “And now we have forever.”


End file.
